Former Chief Secy Hira is SAT member

Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, March 27

It is former Chief Secretary Harinder Hira and retired Additional Chief Secretary Prem Kumar who will be the two administrative members of the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) reconstituted by the Congress regime.

Several retired bureaucrats and judicial officers were in the race for the post of judicial member and two posts of administrative member.

Secretary, Law, DK Sharma has been appointed as the judicial member in the SAT. Retired High Court Judge Justice VK Sharma has already been appointed as its chairman.

Sources said the Screening Committee headed by Chief Justice Mansoor Ahmad Mir, which met on March 16, had given its approval for the names for being appointed as judicial and administrative member of the SAT.

Hira had retired as Chief Secretary in April 2012.

More than six IAS and Indian Forest Service Officers had applied for the two posts of administrative members in SAT.

The list of contenders for the lone post of judicial member was very long with eight retired judges and 12 lawyers having applied for it.

The Congress in its election manifesto before the December 2012 Assembly polls had promised that if voted to power it would reconstitute SAT.

The plea given by the Congress was that SAT was the main body which facilitated and helped the government in seeking legal redressal of their grievances.

The state government felt that it was far more easier for the government employees to seek justice from SAT than the High Court in service-related issues.

When SAT was abolished on July 8, 2008, the number of cases pending before it was about 23,000. All these cases were transferred to the High Court.

The BJP government had then justified the move of scrapping the tribunal by stating that since most of the cases filed in SAT end up in the High Court, a lot of expenditure would be saved if it was abolished.

The BJP regime had also assured that the government would also consider setting up a bench of High Court at Dharamsala so that employees did not have to travel all the way to Shimla.